


As It Slouches And Slithers

by Brumeier



Series: Alternate Earths 'verse [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Rodney McKay, Community: ushobwri, Horror, M/M, Team, Tentacle Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 20:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8223419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: Rodney's team of Alternate Earth explorers encounters an Earth that's a primordial swamp, inhabited by some pretty terrifying creatures, and only Rodney can save them!





	

The humidity was so high that it was hard to breathe, and Rodney’s clothes were clinging to him in a decidedly unpleasant way. The really worrisome thing, though, was the amount of radiation in the air. (Rodney made a mental note to add Prussian Blue tablets to his emergency kit.) It wasn’t clear if the cause of the radiation was a change in the Earth’s proximity to the sun, or if it was the result of some cataclysmic nuclear disaster that had destroyed all human life.

Unfortunately, there were plenty of _other_ life forms oozing around in the swampy areas around the spot that the ERB had deposited Rodney and his team.

“I’d really like to go now,” Analise said. She thunked another tentacled _something_ with her stick and sent it scuttling away.

“Doc, can’t you just –”

“No!” Rodney snapped at Ford. “And stop asking.”

The ERB remote device gave them a very strict time limit for each alternate Earth visit – exactly five hours – and if Rodney tried to alter that there was a very good chance it would throw the whole system off and they’d lose control of it; wormholes to other realities, it turned out, were a lot less stable than those to other parts of the galaxy. He wasn’t willing to cut off their chances of getting back home just because he was uncomfortable.

“Sure would’ve been helpful having a gun,” John said.

“Oh, stop pouting. We’ve been over this a hundred times.”

“I agree with Dr. McKay,” Analise said.

“Surprise, surprise,” Ford muttered, just loud enough for Rodney to hear.

Rodney sighed. “Really? Is this going to turn into some Marines versus scientists thing?”

“I’m Air Force,” John said, and kicked at something that looked like an overripe slug. It exploded with a squishy pop all over his boot.

“Oh, that’s disgusting.” Analise held a hand over her mouth. “I’m gonna be sick.”

John was looking like he might be, too. His boot was covered with thick, purplish-red gelatinous goo.

Rodney wished he could adjust the ERB remote. They’d been stuck on that hellish alternate Earth for far too long. There’d been time for a little exploring when they first got there, and Rodney had been interested to see such a huge change from every other modern AE they’d visited so far. This Earth looked like it would have been a perfect location to shoot one of the Jurassic Park movies. 

And then the creatures had shown up and they’d spent the remainder of the time defending their little patch of solid ground, waiting for the clock to run down so they could get out of there.

“Anyone else hear that?” John asked.

“No, but I see _that_ ,” Analise replied. 

A thick fog was rolling in, swirling and curling through the thick undergrowth as if it were alive. Rodney’s skin crawled, and he exchanged a look with John. Neither of them needed to say the words out loud. _I have a bad feeling about this_.

The sound John had heard quickly grew louder, which was incredibly unfortunate. It was a kind of sucking, squelching, slithering sound, and Rodney rubbed at his bare forearms; the little hairs were standing up.

“This is bad,” Ford whispered. 

Analise brandished her stick like a baseball bat, and both John and Ford assumed defensive positions. Rodney pulled the ERB remote out of his bag and willed the numbers to count down faster.

The fog intensified, and then billowed up as something behind it displaced the air. Rodney was pretty sure he forgot to breathe.

“Is that a fucking eye?” John asked in a strangled voice.

“Sweet baby Jesus,” Ford said.

Analise made a pained sound.

Rodney stared, and wished like hell he could unsee what he was seeing.

Crawling across the swampy, fog-shrouded ground, by means of several long tentacles, was a globular mass of flesh with one giant eye set into the middle of it. One giant, unblinking eye with a greyish-blue iris, which rolled back and forth in its socket as it looked at each of them in turn.

If Rodney had been able to unclench all the muscles in his body, which had tightened up immediately upon the arrival of the…the _thing_ , he was sure he’d have pissed himself.

Two of the long tentacles slithered forward through the fog, one of them brushing against Rodney’s shoe, and that broke his paralysis.

“Run!” he shouted, stuffing the ERB remote back in the bag.

They couldn’t go far, or fast, not with the fog obscuring their view. There was relatively little solid ground, a lot of the area made up of sucking mug bogs and swamp. John took point, and Ford covered their six, and Rodney had to admit that maybe he was wrong about bringing weapons to AEs. Yes, they could run afoul of local law enforcement, but he’d feel a whole lot better if John could pump some bullets into that disgusting eye.

“Major!” Ford didn’t shout so much as he screamed, and John immediately reversed direction. 

“Keep going!” he barked at Rodney. “We’ll catch up!”

Rodney was torn. Clearly Ford needed help, but running _towards_ the big, creepy eye seemed counterintuitive. And he had to keep Analise safe, right? 

Except Analise was pushing past him and following John, and Rodney couldn’t very well be the only one who ran away. Sometimes being part of a team sucked.

Ford had gotten snared by a tentacle and was dangling upside down, six feet off the ground. John was pegging rocks at the eye. Most of them glanced off, but some sank into the sclera, and Rodney felt his gorge rising.

Analise was beating at the tentacle, trying to get it to drop Ford; her success seemed just as unlikely as John’s. Rodney did a quick mental inventory of his bag, but he couldn’t think of anything that could be used as a weapon. Unless…

Rodney swallowed down his terror and walked towards the eye, hand jammed in the bag, rooting around.

“McKay! What the hell are you doing?”

“I have no idea!”

The eye was ten times more disgusting up close. The pupil was almost as tall as Rodney, and there was an intelligence in that unblinking gaze that turned Rodney’s stomach. 

A tentacle twined around Rodney’s ankle, and it was now or never. He pulled out his EpiPen, primed it, and jammed it into the eye so hard that his hand sunk in, a viscous layer of slime covering his skin.

_Don’t puke on the eye! Don’t puke on the eye!_

Rodney extricated his hand, and then panicked when he felt himself being yanked backwards.

“You stupid ass! Are you trying to get killed?” John. Thank goodness.

“Something’s happening,” Analise called out. 

“Side effects, motherfucker!” Rodney shouted at the eye.

The fleshy mass the eye was set in was undulating and pulsing, and blisters were rising up on it. Rodney thought of the exploding slug.

“We have to go! We have to go right now!” Because he could deal with a lot of things, but being covered in exploding eye goo was going too far.

The tentacles retracted, dropping Ford in the process, and they fluttered over the pulsating flesh as if trying to figure out what was wrong. Rodney would forever be grateful that the thing had no mouth, because in his head he could imagine all too well the sounds it would be making if it did.

John and Rodney hauled Ford to his feet and they chased after Analise, who was running so fast it didn’t look like her feet were touching the ground. The ERB remote started to buzz and Rodney wiped his hand off on his pants before he pulled it out of the bag.

“It’s time!” He pushed the big green button and an ERB formed ahead of them, swirling shades of blue. “Go!”

They ran into the event horizon just as the ground shook behind them. Rodney hunched his shoulders, put his arms over his head, and planned to burn everything he was wearing as soon as he got home.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** Written for Monster Fest at [You Should Be Writing](http://ushobwri.livejournal.com/126255.html), for Lovecraftian Tentacled Horror Day.
> 
> As it happens, it was super foggy this morning on my drive to work. What my mother always called Crawling Eye weather, after the 1958 movie of the same name. I saw part of it when I was a kid and, while I’d probably find it incredibly laughable now, back then it scared the bejeebers out of me. So I thought why not scare the bejeebers out of Rodney too? ::grins::
> 
> Title from the song _If You Never Say Goodbye_ by P.M. Dawn.
> 
> This also fills the Tentacles square on my h/c bingo card.


End file.
